


To Change

by Transistance



Series: Incompatible [2]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Confusion, Flirting, Other, Reflection, Trans Character, Undecided Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 14:35:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4483034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transistance/pseuds/Transistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a simple miscalculation, really, based too much on logic and too little on humanity. And suddenly what they have is different - it is a relationship built on lies and mutual insecurity, but it is a relationship nonetheless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Change

**Author's Note:**

> There is no defining moment, is the point I have attempted to make. There is only a series of good gestures with bad intent.

He didn't find her attractive. Perhaps that was the problem. She could perhaps be described as alluring at best, jarring at worst. He could see, logically and if he squinted a bit, why she could be viewed as beautiful – but not how that could cause him to want to spend any more time with her than he already did.

She smirked at him, and he put her on desk duty. She batted her eyelashes and he cursed her to hell and back. She made a particularly baited comment at a particularly stressful time and he awarded her three hours' overtime, which backfired spectacularly because he was unfortunately doing the same. That incident convinced her that he was as up for this as she was, and she got worse.

Her whispered words worried away at him constantly, now seeming louder than ever. _Come on, you might enjoy it, just once, give it a try? It doesn't have to mean anything. I wouldn't tell anyone if you didn't. Why not?_

This wasn't her fault, exactly – she was acting the same as she always had. It was his reactions to it that were changing, and he wished they weren't. He found them more off-putting, less easy to brush past. Her flirtations were becoming a distraction, and he wished he were able to say he didn't know why.

It had been that night. That one single quiet night after a single uneventful evening, on which nothing had happened. Or at least nothing had happened that would give Sutcliff cause to cease her attachment to him.

First off, the realization that she was a woman had finally clicked into place. It had been very strange, and he hated himself for not seeing it sooner. There was a difference between men who enjoyed presenting themselves as ladies and bona fide transgender individuals, and the realization of her situation had stirred something within him. It certainly wasn't attraction. Wasn't even empathy. Sympathy, perhaps – or just simple pity.

It was, explicitly or not, his job as a supervisory agent to ensure that the individuals working under him did so at their best. He didn't like to consider the damaging results of the lack of recognition for Grell's gender – he didn't have to. It was plain as day in her attitudes; her behaviours; her actions. If she was honest – and he was prepared to bet she was – then she had not been treated fairly; not by him, not by anyone. But on the other hand, were she to be registered as female officially, she would not be permitted to work in collections. That was a topic he would have to broach with her at some point. Her identity or her rather relished job – it didn't seem a particularly fair choice to force upon her.

He'd get round to it eventually.

The other thing had been as small as the first – she had fallen asleep with her head upon his shoulder. This had never happened before – in all honesty it had been years since he had contact even as intimate as that, and it had been... nice. Not desirable or thought-provoking... just nice.

This had changed their relationship a little. He wasn't sure if she had noticed yet or not.

_Just one night, nobody would know, wouldn't tar your reputation, relax a little, unwind, give me a chance..._

He was still not certain exactly what she wanted from him. The comments and the gestures and the expressions all suggested _lust, lust, lust_ , but she had seemed content to just sit with him the other day and talk until she ran out of words. Often, offhand, she would go on at length about _romance_ and _flowers_ and _marriage_ and _love_. But when they were alone her voice would drop and breathe too closely to his ear murmurings of _hunger_ and _heat_ and _desire_. He pushed her away every day as he always had, but the action did nothing to dispel the strength of her words.

He did not want her. He knew that, in the same thoughtless way that a pollinating insect knows it has no use for a metal flower. Except that that implied that he were comparing her against others; if he accepted that as an explanation he would have been lying to himself. William had no use for flowers of any vein. Beauty held little purpose in an office.

It wasn't her beauty that prevented him from cutting himself off from her.

In all honesty, he could put neither name nor definition to it. He didn't know what he felt for Sutcliff any more, and wished that he did. Uncertainties were never welcome, and being able to pinpoint the feelings would make them easier to deal with, one way or another.

_I'm always open, you would enjoy me, even just once..._

He was still not exactly certain what he wanted from her, if anything – but he was fairly certain it wasn't a one night stand.

_We could do it however you like... I've always thought you the dominating type, but really, I can make it pleasurable for you however we go about it..._

All too often he felt her ghostly lips in his hair, almost brushing his neck – as though she were smelling him, which was weird even for her. He had asked her to stop several times but only ever received giggles in place of answers before she flounced away.

Her hands were becoming an issue as well. They were more often than not dancing across his shoulders, gliding down his back, griping his arms. Once she'd had the gall to touch his thigh, and he had reflexly and brutally backhanded her. The bruise took several days to clear, and she didn't try her luck on that account again.

He wanted her to go away; to stop distracting him and get back to her own work. Not that her flirtations had much effect on how much she got done – but it was a lot harder for him to fill out forms when his head was full of her bile.

He wasn't certain how to confront the problem she presented – never had he found any solution that could make her back down. And he had tried. One century's worth of attempts had boiled down to nothing, and here he was now.

Clearly he was approaching it from the wrong direction.

If she was so enamoured with his lack of caring for her then, logically, caring for her would force her interests elsewhere.

Even he recognised the stupidity of that notion, but if Grell Sutcliff was as perverse as she appeared then it would succeed.

If her perversity was an act then he would probably be stuck with her indefinitely in a much worse way than he currently was, but he decided that that was unlikely to happen. No. She thrived off the cold in him, flaming as she was, and would move on quickly if it disappeared.

So, quite simply, he stopped ignoring her.

She seemed almost suspicious the first time he didn't move to avoid her in the office canteen, although hid it with a jibe; was happily surprised when he offered her a coffee on one of the rare days that she turned in the shift's paperwork on time; was positively ecstatic when he took her out to a semi-formal lunch one day. And, to his surprise, her demeanour changed – her crass words and crude actions burned off like mist, and she actually became less clingy, her attitude becoming much more genial and cleanly upbeat. She still laughed and smirked and was sharp-tongued to a fault, but the insincere indecencies she usually wore like a cloak seemed to fall from her, shed like a dead weight. Paperwork from her became less unpredictable and completed reaps more regular, and it took him a while to pinpoint exactly why.

She was trying to impress him, changing tactics to match his own shift of attitude.

The guilt set in like a rot, far too suddenly for him to shake off, and he found himself floundering. Grell's company when like this was almost pleasant, and he realized he had no idea which side was the lie. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither. She had _changed_ herself to suit him – or had she been acting all along?

Surely the calamities she caused every day had not been a way of fishing for his attention. Surely she hadn't thought that innuendo-strewn comments and her usual twisted displays would draw him toward her. Not even she could be that oblivious.

This was the act, then – but his own was as fabricated as hers. If he dropped it, dropped her again like a restless child would drop a used toy, would she revert? Would the gestures and the rudeness and the faux uselessness return, or would it be replaced by anger, bitterness, a feeling from her of utter betrayal? He didn't know what drove her actions or her thoughts, and wouldn't deign to guess – but what if it destroyed her?

_You're being overly dramatic now_ , he chided himself. _Shut up and consider it rationally_. Rationally, Grell Sutcliff had been shut out before – by him and others – but as far as he knew not after they had started reciprocating gestures of attraction. He had made a mistake; a huge, blatant, blundering miscalculation.

She was so _friendly._ And suddenly he didn't know where he stood or what he wanted of anything.

He accompanied her to the theatre one night, because he gathered that it was something she would enjoy and something that he'd never done before, and then walked her home to leave her standing on her doorstep, face a picture of honest perplexity.

“You can come in, you know,” she'd said. “It's not like-”

Leaving before a sentence was finished was very rude, but he was confused, and she was confused, and for the first time he felt truly lost.

It seemed that he was in a relationship now, somehow, based on mutual false affection, except he had no idea whether Grell's was false or completely genuine, and was starting to doubt his own convictions alongside hers.

He wondered if the saying ' _The road to Hell is paved with good intentions_ ' held any truth, and if so, exactly where he was going.

 


End file.
